Brittany Kleinschnitz '13 Female deer do not normally produce antlers, aside from reindeer or caribou. The head - bare between the ears and rounded, the flesh taut and flat to skull - feminine, and thus a lack of congenital weaponry. So when she is found walking in fall, between pines, a belly full, they call her doe with skepticism, they look at her branched antlers covered with velvet, 17 cm. high and bearing three points, and say No woman here.                  Artemis, Greek goddess of wilderness,        childbirth and virginity - a mother of the hunt and        simultaneous protector - her chariot is drawn by        four deer. The fifth, Kerynean, roams free and        cannot be captured.                  When Agamemnon steals the life of a stag in        a forest dedicated to Artemis, the goddess snuffs out        the wind on the seas in Greece. For the wind’s        return she demands sacrifice as reparation in the        form of Iphigeneia, the king’s daughter. Yet, before        the youth could be slaughtered, the good mother        Artemis snatches her body up from the altar and        deposits a deer in its place. Pretty pseudohermaphrodite, who steals your motherhood? Internally, too, she is horned and heart shaped. There is a baby in the bicornuate, the fertile cornucopia filled with a certain fruit, the horns of which ended blindly. No one before has told her that she cannot bear young.                  Native American lore (that of the Cherokee,        the Muskogee, the Seminole, the Choctaw) calls the        deer a shape-shifter. “Deer Woman”, a spirit that        moves and morphs between forms at will from deer        to woman and back again. She is a teacher of        sexuality, fertility, and maturation.                  When a man comes upon this spirit, she        appears to be the most beautiful woman he has ever        seen, his desire for a body contoured, lean and soft.        She lures him with movement and her sex, the chase,        towards the cover of trees, gives him a moment of        ecstasy before driving his head into dirt with strong        hooves, their edges sharp and cloven. I see her move and I match stride through the thick of dripping pines. The curve of her body bulging with young, and pumping blood. Her spindly legs skipping beats, wobbling. See me horned and heart shaped, too, internally. Congenital bicornuate, I have branched antlers where others are bare and rounded. A bent and empty cornucopia, for this body is not as lithe as hers, and not nearly as strong to carry.                  In the Celtic tradition, the deer is a symbol of        femininity. They believed them to be faeries, a        shape-shifter as well, changing from deer to woman        in order to protect her fellow females from being        hunted by men.                  Celtic warrior, Finn, fell in love with and        married the goddess Sadb to allow her a human        form after a druid had turned her into a deer. Upon        returning from battle one day, Finn finds that Sadb        is missing and searches for her for seven years. Time        passes, and while out hunting, Finn comes upon a        boy. He is naked and his hair is long. The boy says        that he lives in the woods with his mother, a gentle        doe. Finn realizes he has found his love, and that she        had given birth to a human child, his child, and dubs        him Oisin, meaning “little fawn”. What women are we, how masculine, what organically malformed beauty is hidden beneath velvet skin? In the heat of a sunbeam she paws the dirt, upturning stones, and grunts like a stag. Rubbing soft clothed antlers impatiently on a tree, the bark crumbling, she bends at the knees as woven wicker and I move to sit parallel, cross-legged. Her body shifts from beneath its weight and the stomach rests, balanced on a bed of moss and leaves. Brittany Kleinschnitz is a junior and studies Visual Arts, with a focus in photography and printmaking, and Literature.